Sunday, 28 September 2014

I can resist everything but temptation and more yarn. I succumbed, and ordered the yarn for Scheepjes Wol's Crochet-A-Long. The colours are just so lovely! I ordered the 'Succulent' colourway, after much deliberation, and it should be arriving this week. The first part of the pattern is released this coming Friday. Excited!

In the meantime, I've finished the blanket I started a couple of years ago. Very pleased with that. Except for the small issue of the ends not being quite the same width. That'll be down to one end being granny squares and the other being granny stripes. I padded the short end out with stitches as much as possible, but it's still a little uneven. Not noticeable as long as I don't fold it up...

It is just the right size to go over our bed in the winter.

The pattern came from Nicki Trench's Cute and Easy Crochet, but I widened it to go over the bed, and changed the edging. I was going to do a zigzag edging I found on Pinterest, but in the end I did pretty much the same thing in a straight line. It's crocheting into only the back loop for each row, so it comes out with that little ridge.

I'm trying out some patchwork too, right now. I got a book for my birthday called 'Quilting On The Go', about English Paper Piecing. I prefer to work by hand, so it suits me nicely. I've learnt some really good techniques for making the patches, and once I realised I could order precut paper templates, that was it! It was always the hours spent cutting the inevitably wonky hexes out that put me off when I was younger. These must be die-cut or something - they're so magically even! It makes the patchwork even too.

That's it so far. It's going to be built out to a rectangle, then evened up with some half-hexes. After that, I'm feeling my way a bit, but the book is very informative. Finally, it's going to be a little quilt for Hattie to sit on my lap on. She's not majorly fussy about perfection, but I'd like to make this as nice as possible. It's a good practice piece.

I also found a good way to keep my patches in the right order while I stitch them on. That photo there is a quick pic on my phone to remember the order for the next row, but then I thread the patches onto a length of cotton with a button on the end, so I can slide them off one by one in the right order. I'm sure this is a very well known method, but I was really chuffed with myself for coming up with it.

And of course there are always multiple projects on the go. A while back, I got a job lot of Sirdar yarn from eBay with the idea of doing a blanket from squares. Each square is small, so it can be worked in the car or with a cat on my lap (a permanent fixture in the winter). I just make as many squares as I can get out of each ball, then I'll work out an order to put it together in. That'll be fun.

Nice colours. They screamed 'blanket' as soon as I saw the eBay pics.

And no post would be complete without a portrait of a pusscat!

Penny on my birthday. Or her birthday. She certainly thought it was her birthday when all these bags and paper turned up one morning!

About Me

I'm Ali, living in the West Midlands in the UK with my husband and two mad cats. I'm a musician, reader, writer and obsessive crocheter. I have a Folksy shop, also called Little Lovely Stuff, where a lot of the things I make are for sale - click on the link below to go there - and I'm happy to take commissions and orders - just leave a comment!
Little Lovely Stuff on Folksy / @AliB138 on Twitter.